Gadgetory

back in 2013 the original motox was a breath of fresh air to a smartphone community already growing fatigue of phablet disease it was a smaller humbler phone that focused on usability not brag ability a smartphone to restore sanity well that Saturday was short-lived last year's sequel to the original Moto X upped the build quality and process respects while also significantly expanding the phone's size it was still a fantastic device but in inflating itself to appeal to a mainstream audience it lost some of the whimsy that had made its predecessor so compelling flash forward to 2015 and it seems the newly Lenovo fied Motorola has no intention of returning to a niche audience the third generation Moto X pure edition is a 5.7 inch quad HD monster of a smartphone primed to do battle with the top-end phablets of the modern world and it's price to move how much of the original Moto X vision does it sacrifice to get there and is the trade-off worth it I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow let's find out the first thing you notice when you take the Moto X pure edition out of the box is it's big old footprint motorola told us it wanted to build something for people who use their smartphone as a media device for browsing and movie watching and the reg was at big display necessitated and expanded chassis as well the phone tips the scales at 179 grams more massive even than the all-glass galaxy note5 and it's chubby to hitting 11 millimeters at its thickest point this is probably the biggest departure Motorola makes from the spirit of the Moto X as a whole the pure edition is as prodigious as its predecessors were pocketable fortunately motorola makes at work through organ nom ik's the rounded backside lets the body taper to just over six millimeters at the edges and the trademark dimple is more than just a visual counterbalance to the camera lens it's an anchor point for a fingertip to make using the phone more comfortable the bezels flanking the display are slim enough to make the Moto X a fairly narrow phone while their screen sizes are somewhat comparable the Moto X pure edition is a much less cumbersome device than its wide-body cousin the Nexus 6 and Motorola's spared no expense on the display itself it's quad HD and 5.7 inches on the diagonal which makes for a density of 515 PPI more than enough resolution for even the most persnickety pixel pusher it's really a very pretty screen but it's not perfect direct sunlight can still overwhelm it and I really wish Motorola had stuck with an AMOLED panel instead of making the switch to IPS here LCD technology just can't replicate OLED Zinke blacks and the lower contrast means Motorola's active display is tougher to see if there's any glare on the Gorilla Glass fortunately almost anything else you don't like about the Moto X hardware you can change before you buy it ordering a Moto X pure edition through Moto maker is a lot like custom building your own car between backing material accent and frame colors and storage options there are over a thousand possible design variations we went with silicone rubber backing which might be one of the grip iasts phone materials I've ever encountered in concert with the metal side rails it gives the phone a really solid no-nonsense feel and it's also a subtle reminder that the phone is water-resistant to an extent the pure addition also packs a nice surprise on the flip side of its nano SIM tray a micro SD card slot good for up to 128 gigs of extra storage and while we're up there fun fact the Moto X does indeed support a notification LED right behind its upper speaker grille but it's unused by the software for good reason that reason is the aforementioned active display you can pick the phone up more just wave your hand over the screen to trigger an automatic preview of the time and you're waiting notifications use it for a while and you really miss it when moving to a phone that doesn't have something similar that goes for the rest of the Moto features - which are largely unchanged from previous Moto X versions the phone can still read your text messages aloud and let you respond by voice dictation if it detects you're driving a cool feature even if it's a little hit and miss new text from Chris Larson to hear it say listen listen Chris said Chris Larson yo don't take Massachusetts Avenue because the traffic is mad epic and terrible to reply to Chris C sent message send message to late burrows if I think you said 28 broseph is that correct yeah awesome I'll send that now it'll also silence your alerts if the calendar tells it you're in a meeting and you can set custom behaviors for specific locations like work and home moto voice is back as well so you can ask questions and give commands completely hands-free using a custom key phrase okay Jarvis play pin back on Spotify alright if that's a little obtrusive for you there's a new boys feature here just raise the phone to your ear and wait for the tone then speak a command or question and you'll get your replies through the earpiece and if you find yourself in need of a flashlight on the quick you don't need to fire up the display to do it just give the motox a little chop-chop BAM you're in torch town some of these features are better in concept and execution the key phrase recognition process is still slower than just picking the phone up and hitting the microphone button and a voice dictation as a whole can be hit and miss at times but overall the software is probably where Motorola sticks to its roots than most these are intelligent improvements that add to the smartphone experience without crossing over into intrusive bloatware Motorola didn't go with the standard Google software for the Moto X camera though instead of returning for the third year to its custom-built viewfinder app that means you can easily launch the camera using the double twist gesture one of our favorite motox features since the beginning but it's not always so convenient if you're a fan of one-handed shooting it can be really hard to change settings or focus and exposure on-the-fly and there are precious few manual controls to help out in a challenging situation also the pure addition really seems to hate shooting in 4k mode it slows the entire phone to a crawl in the temperature skyrockets it's literally a hot mess fortunately the hardware makes it worth it the sensor here is a Sony IMX 230 that maxes out at 21 megapixels and brings a new and really quite good digital stabilization package phase detection autofocus makes it pretty easy to get a clear shot and color reproduction is significantly better than on last generation Sony sensors like the one in the Nexus 6 as with all smartphone cameras this one is much happier in broad daylight turn the lights down and your photos start getting noisier grainy er and what's just worse but again that's par for the course probably the biggest surprise for me came in video testing where the new sensor and stabilization work together to make for some really excellent footage thankfully the stuttering in the viewfinder doesn't translate to the end result the improvements have made their way to the front side too with the 5-megapixel selfie cam now augmented by an LED flash but I'm not a big fan of this it washes out faces it doesn't work in anything but the darkest rooms and third party apps like Twitter and snapchat can't yet access it because it's so uncommon besides the camera does just fine without the flash in most circumstances anyway I find another software enhancement much more compelling the camera will now automatically recognize bar codes QR codes and business cards and let you scan them right into your contact list or copy em to your clipboard it's a little on the slow side but there's no switching modes or downloading apps or fumbling with plugins it just works right out of the box when you take the useful features together with the newly upgraded optics the pure addition becomes the first moto X I'd actually want to use for photography I've used the pure edition for over a week in Greater Boston and rural New York predominantly on t-mobile us what's nice about a phone marketed as compatible with any network though is that switching carriers is literally as easy as swapping Sims at least when it comes to GSM carriers the phone doesn't even need a reboot it just registers on the new network switches to another pre-loaded APN set and poof it's like it's always been an AT&T phone voice quality is solid as well as we've come to expect from Motorola and reception is good too though if you're in a region where band 12 support is a requisite be sure to check out our full review linked in the description below for more notes on that less impressive than voice quality or reception is battery life a 3000 milliamp hour power pack is not enough it seems to keep pace with all the Moto X can do if I minimize how much I use the phone and militantly police my app activity I can get to the end of a day with light to moderate use but even then it's tough to hit 4 hours of screen on time if on the other hand I use the phone the way I want to which is to say heavily the phone is dead in five hours or less more detailed usage stats are in the full review at pocket now on the plus side the included 25 watt turbo charger juices up the phone stupid fast it still sucks to be a wall hugger but at least with this charger you don't have to be one for long finally general performance on the Snapdragon 808 processor is very good even graphics laden games run quite well and the twin front firing speakers give you a face full of sound while you play just hold on tight and you're jerking the wheel a lot while the silicon is grippy the Moto X runs hot and under a load it gets hot enough to get a good sweat film going on your fingertips if you've been a fan of the Moto X family since the beginning the pure edition is only superficially familiar instead of a smart yet humble handheld it's a spec packed phablet it's the antithesis of what the original Moto X represented but not everyone as a smartphone of philosophize ER and this phone wasn't built for old timey motorola fans it was built to turn regular people into new ones like Google's Nexus family the Moto X line has evolved over time to mean something different if you like what its evolved into namely a husky handheld with smart features and the power to keep up with almost anything you can throw at it then the Moto X pure edition is a really good smartphone add in the class-leading customizability and the fact that you can buy it unlocked for way cheaper than most of the competition and it becomes a great smartphone be sure to take in our full written review at pocket now linked in the description below until next time this has been michael fisher with pocket now and if you get a Moto X pure edition I want to know about our tweet at me captain to phone's captain the number two phones thanks for watching we'll see you next time